


Bar tel'vegara

by itzteegan



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Canon Compliant, Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC, F/M, Heartbreak, Heavy Angst, Is it really canon divergent if I only added a few lines of dialogue?, Mostly Canon Compliant, Not Happy, Sad, Solavellan, Solavellan Hell, idk you be the judge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:07:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29913234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itzteegan/pseuds/itzteegan
Summary: Bar tel'vegara - the point of no returnTwo long years after Solas left, Ayanna meets him once more, and once again discovers that despite the passage of time, he still knows how to break her heart.
Relationships: Female Inquisitor/Solas (Dragon Age), Female Lavellan/Solas, Fen'Harel | Solas/Female Lavellan, Inquisitor/Solas (Dragon Age)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	Bar tel'vegara

**Author's Note:**

> Blame this one on the Richard Siken bot on Twitter, because it tweeted out the quote at the beginning, I saw it, and I just couldn't resist writing Solavellan with it.
> 
> Also, big thanks to CrackingLamb who helped me with the title translation. <3

_I swear, I end up_

_feeling empty, like you’ve taken something out of me, and I have to search_

_my body for the scars, thinking Did he find that one last tender place to_

_sink his teeth in?_

———

Ayanna Lavellan stopped in her tracks, stock still as she took in the sight before her. Stone statues - once living, breathing Qunari - now littered the path she followed, as if they were eerie trail markers taking her to the one person in all of Thedas she hadn’t expected to see. And now that she did see, now that she saw him not in his apostate guise but in his full, revealed glory, she wanted to sink to her knees and weep.

She had thought this chapter of her life over and done with, left behind amoungst the rubble of the Temple of Sacred Ashes. How many nights had she lain awake, crying into her pillow as she wondered _why_? How many different ways had she plotted and planned to win him back? How long had it been since she’d finally given up and moved on, dutifully carrying out the role of _Inquisitor_ , the role that Thedas needed, resigned to never even lay eyes on her love again?

But now there he was, right there in front of her, and Ayanna knew she’d been an utter fool to think she’d ever gotten over him. Now all those sleepless nights returned to her tenfold, the grief and the sorrow overwhelming her, constricting her chest and crawling up to settle in her throat. She gasped for a moment as if she were being choked, though nothing touched her. No, it was just her and him and the vast space between them.

And just like that, the old wound was opened, scar tissue stripped away to reveal the tender flesh underneath. Whether it was a fit of random timing or a reflection of her inner turmoil, the anchor chose then to flair, and she buckled, clutching her hand to her chest as the white hot pain sliced up her arm and into her sternum. Not even when she’d first woken in Haven had it been this bad. Surely she was dying, and considering the circumstances, perhaps that was for the best. The Qunari attempting to invade the South, to kill its leaders and move in during the resulting chaos. Would it really be as simple as that? It seemed a gamble they were confident enough to wager, at least, and that was enough to give her pause. And alongside that threat, the fate of the Inquisition loomed in the background, caught between two factions that vied for either its dissolution or its assimilation. Either way, the Qunari seemed eagre to see her dead. Either way, the organisation she’d fought and bled for and built from the ground up would not come out of this the same as it went in.

Either way, she was an inconvenience.

Suddenly, the pain in her arm ceased, and a stray thought wondered if only the same could be done for her heart. She looked up to see _him_ approach, Solas in all his trumped up Elvhen glory, his armour gleaming and the robes underneath rich. He looked like a dream out of an ancient mural, and when he spoke, perhaps it was her imagination, but she could feel the world tremble. “That should give us more time.” His voice, something she found comforting and soothing before now stung to hear, like claws tearing into the flesh of her heart, and she almost flinched as he said - not asked - “I suspect you have questions.”

Oh yes, she had questions. Many of them in fact, the first and foremost being, _How dare you?_ They burned on her tongue, sitting like a hot coal, but even then the words would barely twist together into anything halfway coherent. Even as he helped her to her feet, the only one she could draw out of herself was simply an echo of the same question she’d asked him a long time ago … “Why?”

The barest furrow knitted in his brow as he replied, “It is … _complicated_ , vhenan.”

Ayanna shook her head, unwilling to simply accept such a useless explanation. “You left me with nary a word, like what we had meant nothing to you at all. You disappeared after the final fight with Corypheus so even _that_ victory felt hollow. Leliana’s agents tried and tried and tried again to find any trace of you, but they found nothing. And now you show up two years later and … what?” Steeling herself, she gripped tightly to her courage as she looked him in the eye. “We’ve been through much for you to hand wave everything away with _it’s complicated_. Just … _try_ , Solas. For me? If I _ever_ meant _anything_ to you …”

Solas could barely even allow her the space to put a period at the end of her sentence before he assured her, “You meant _everything_ to me.” Reaching up, he cupped her cheek, a certain kind of sadness she wasn’t sure he should be allowed to feel shining in his eyes as his words rang hollow, “That is precisely _why_ I had to leave. Why I had to leave _you_.”

A bitter chuckle escaped her lips. “After all this time and still you speak in riddles and veiled metaphors. _Enough_ , Solas. Tell me plainly or not at all.”

And so he did. The truth, for once, or as close to it as he’d ever been. Though he did indeed indulge her request, she could scarcely believe what she heard. The Evanuris, Fen’Harel, vallaslin, the veil, the true downfall of her ancient kin … it seemed incredible, and had she not known Solas to ever joke about such serious matters, she may have wondered if he was simply egging her on with fantastical tales so outlandish she surely wouldn’t question it. But alas, she knew all too well that he wasn’t, from the serious bent of his posture to the slight frown that alighted on his face.

It was insane. Surely she would wake any minute and banish the nonsense dream from her mind. But no, she was in the waking world, as she well knew. The truth was just a bitter pill to swallow. The truth that the Dalish had gotten it all wrong, that Fen’Harel wasn’t simply some trickster, that the appearance of shemlen hadn’t led to the Elvhen’s fall from grace. Ayanna then understood the depth of his desperation when he’d tried to convince her to allow him to remove her vallaslin and how her refusal must have seemed to him, though she stood by her decision, still. Of course, that only made her wonder … “Solas … if I’d let you remove my vallaslin … would you have stayed with me?” Tears pricked her eyes as she didn’t allow herself to look anywhere but squarely at him as she awaited his answer.

The bitter smile that curled around his lips was her answer even before he shook her head. “No, vhenan. I had been set on leaving before I offered. It was, as I intended, to be a last, parting gift.” He snorted softly as he added, “One you refused, of course.”

Anger coloured her cheeks. “And I’m glad I did, even more so than I was before.” He quirked his eyebrow, a question glistening in his eyes, but instead of asking it, he waited for her to speak the answer. “Just what would I have said when I went back to Skyhold? To my clan? Bare-faced and embarrassed, I would have never been able to tell them the truth. You would have put that on me?”

“I would have seen you freed from those cruel marks and what they represent, regardless of the feelings of others.” Inclining his head, he replied, “But, that was your choice to make. And, just as I did then, I respect it. As I said, you are perfect exactly as you are.”

To hear those same words echoed once more cut through her like a knife, carving a path of pain and grief that tore straight to her heart. “So no matter what I would have done, you would have left me regardless? I wonder then why you even pursued anything with me, if it would have ended all the same.”

“You have a rare and marvellous spirit, and in that, I found I could not resist that pull, even if it was doomed to end. You showed me much, vhenan, and I knew that should I not leave, you would sway me from my path.” Shaking his head, he mused, “In another world …”

“In another world, I wouldn’t exist!” Ayanna snapped. “Don’t you see? You mourn what was lost and instead of processing it, you deny it entirely! You would erase this world just as you did the last and say it’s worth it simply because you no longer have to live with the consequences of your actions!” She paid no heed to the tears that flowed down her cheeks, stifling even the tremour in her lip as she promised him, “This world is not perfect, but it still has beauty and worth, and I will prove that to you, with my dying breath if I have to!”

Again, whether it was simply chance or a reflection of herself, the anchor flared once more, even more violently this time, green crackles of lightening shooting out from the centre of her palm and physically radiating up her arm. As she dropped to the ground, she looked up to see Solas approach her once more, a look of pity colouring his face, and in that instant she wanted to smack it off of him even as he tried to empathise with her. “I am sorry, but we are running out of time.”

In all her rage and in all her hurt and grief, she yelled, pleaded with him one last time, “Solas, _var lath vir suledin_!”

He sighed heavily. “I wish it could, vhenan.”

And with that, Ayanna felt her heart break once more. She’d thought she felt sorrow once before, but no, that was simply a prelude, a bitter taste of the draught she drank from now. This was a different hurt, it cut deeper, felt fuller and all encompassing. In the time since Solas had ended things between them, she’d thought that wound healed, but no, she had been wrong, so very, very wrong. Whether by denial or her own self-deceit, it had festered instead, spoiling even the feel of his lips against hers as he grabbed her arm and knelt for one final kiss. It felt odd, foreign, as if it wasn’t even her own body that felt it, experienced it, responded. She even followed after him slightly when he parted, as if on reflex, and at that point she didn’t know if she even wanted him any longer or if they were long past the point of no return. If so, could she have seen it? Could she have prevented such a thing from coming to pass? Or was this simply … inevitable?

Were they inevitable? Were their fates written so? If that was the case, Ayanna mused over what deity she must have crossed to stir up such ire as to put her in such a position.

And just like that, it was over. The pain in her arm slowly dwindled until it vanished completely, just as Solas walked away and slipped through a waiting eluvian. She knew he would have locked it behind him, leaving her only one way out, but still she approached it, stumbling as her arm developed a tingling numbness that was spreading up to her elbow. She should have been more concerned about it, concerned about what he’d done to her, but all of that was pushed aside as she reached out and touched the solid, wavering glass, confirming what she already knew.

As she slumped there against it, breath shuddering through her, she clenched her teeth as the tingling in her arm became a pain of its own, mimicking the pain that radiated through her chest. Once, in the Deep Roads, she’d been grabbed by an ogre, her ribs almost crushed as he squeezed her in his grip, and even that was a pale echo compared to the present. What Solas had left behind once he’d broken up their relationship, after he’d disappeared, it now lay in shambles as she shook uncontrollably, wrapping her good arm around her as if somehow that action would hold her together, as if otherwise she would simply burst and fall apart.

How long she sat there, she could not say. Just as she could not have told who it was that eventually picked her up and ferried her back to the Winter Palace, her left arm gone and her heart in tatters. After the revelations she had experienced, she felt she knew nothing now, that she had been wholly deceived from the beginning. Of what little she knew, however, there were two facts she clung to. One was that this world, however much it may have been a mistake on Solas’ end, was not so imperfect so as to deserve destruction. And two, she would prove it to him, or she would perish.

Though, a part of her felt as if she already had.


End file.
